Even in the midst of their dubious claim that “philosophers did
not go to the opera very often,” Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar
cannot escape acknowledging the combination of “the splendor of
court spectacles, the pomp of national myths, and the sentimental
melodramas” that have traditionally driven opera in its social
contexts (1).1 Discussions of the Restoration
dramatic stage follow the same tripartite preoccupations—they also
typically focus on the return of theater to London after the
Interregnum, the appearance of women on stage in drama, and the
increasing importance of music to theater life before the full
arrival of opera seria in the eighteenth century with
Georg Friedrich Handel’s appearance in London. However, the
specifically interactive relationship between English nationalism,
literature, theater, and music is often overlooked. In particular,
the role of musical form in these displays of
nationalism, especially in conjunction with patriotic libretti, is
largely ignored, despite its ability to bridge the divisions
between each disciplinary field. Textual studies of libretti
rapidly recognize the pro-Imperial feeling that followed the
restoration of the monarchy with Charles II in 1660, the Exclusion
Crisis’s attempts to prevent the Catholic James II from ascending
to the throne in 1685, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when
James (the last Catholic monarch of England) was displaced by the
Hanoverian Protestant William III and Mary II (formalized in 1689).
This is readily seen in the histories of John Dryden, Nahum Tate,
John Crowne, and many others. Moreover, anti-Papist sentiments
frequently appear in an only vaguely coded form as resistance to
tensions based on the French and Italian influences via Catholicism
on James II and Charles II.

Within this complex interaction between stage practices,
politics, literary production, and musical composition, this
article traces the relationship between Restoration libretti and
musical scores by emphasizing their nationalist interests, leading
to the proposition that musical form can reflect or
resist the allegorical political interests of libretti, even to the
point of subverting the dramatic text. By moving across these
materials, I argue for a necessarily interdisciplinary approach to
musical theater of this period, one that emphasizes the combination
of the musical and dramatic texts to form the operatic work as a
whole.

John Blow’s Venus and Adonis is the first piece of
English musical theater that is sung throughout with the intention
of creating a combined literary, dramatic, and musical work, which
qualifies it as the first English opera, although its subtitle,
A Mask for the Entertainment of the King, places it
more firmly in the masque tradition.2 This is for
many scholars a convenient marker for the instantiation of the
English operatic tradition in approximately 1683 and also of the
interaction between text and music in pursuit of nationalist aims.
Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, from no more
than six years later, is the first such work to be overtly
conceived as an opera per se and apparently intended for
performance outside the court; all this is debatable, but
Dido and Aeneas is in any case the first English opera
to become standard in the repertoire.3 However,
the subtitle of Blow’s work draws attention to the mingling of its
erotic titular reference to a political context: a mask for the
entertainment of the King. This was also
the beginning of a trend. As Grzegorzewska notes, “The
sophisticated audience of the Restoration . . . must have
appreciated the licentious agenda of the libretto,” but just as
important, “the King’s illegitimate daughter sang the role of Cupid
during the first performance . . . [and] Mary Moll Davies, . . .
once a royal mistress . . . [,] took the part of Venus” (320), a
woman who brings about the downfall of her lover. With Charles II
on the throne of England for the first performance of the work
(composed by an Anglican and not long before the succession of
James II), likely in 1683, its allegorical content is richly
intermingled with this erotic material. Furthermore, it has been
suggested that Blow was both the composer and librettist, so a
collaborative interaction between text and music is to be expected
(whether this conjecture is accurate or not).4
The crucial point is that early in the...

You must be logged in through an institution that subscribes to this journal or book to access the full text.

Shibboleth

Shibboleth authentication is only available to registered institutions.

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.